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A spelunker is a person who explores caves as a hobby — climbing down into them, crawling through narrow passages, walking through the dark with a lamp. The line above says 'the sport', but that is the activity (); the -er ending means this word is the PERSON who does it. This is mainly American English. British speakers usually say 'caver', and in Britain the sport is called 'caving' or 'potholing'. There is also a quiet joke inside the word: serious cave explorers in America sometimes dislike being called spelunkers, because to them a 'spelunker' sounds like a weekend beginner with cheap equipment, while they call themselves ''. There is even an old joke among them — ' rescue spelunkers'. So the word is common and perfectly normal in ordinary talk, but a little touchy inside the hobby itself. It is not an ancient word: an American cave explorer made it up in the 1930s, borrowing an old dead word 'spelunk' meaning cave.
洞穴探險者（探洞的人）；英式英語多說 caver
組成spelunk（一個早已不用的舊字，意思是「洞穴」）+ -er（做這件事的人）。1930 年代由美國新英格蘭的洞穴探險家 Roger Charles Johnson 造出來的新字。
同家族的字
- spelunkingthe activity, formed from the same spelunk
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
spelunkernoun
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One who explores caves; one who spelunks.
- I took to fishing, on mountain brooks and lakes, and finally I was inveigled into becoming a spelunker. A spelunker is a human worm who crawls into caves ("splunca" is Latin for cave) and explores them.
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derogatoryAn amateur or inadequately prepared caver.
- I am officially a spelunker – but not yet a caver. The dictionary definition of spelunking is “exploring caves for sport.” Serious enthusiasts shun the term, however. They are cavers. A spelunker is an inexperienced amateur. On this dry and balmy mid-November Saturday, our group contains three spelunkers and two cavers.
- But the scariest of all’s the witless caver; Spelunker is the name that he goes by. He caves alone with just one light, A worn-out rope, and boots too tight, Looking for a cave in which to die.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。